When I am thinking about what to write on this blog, I sometimes ask myself “How can I serve my readers?” I should ask this every time, but sometimes I just think of a topic and decide to share it with you, without having thought through how it might or might not serve you.
The difficulty I find in answering the question about being of service to you is that I really do not know your needs. Sometimes it is hard for us to know what our own needs really are, let alone the needs of someone else.
So, I have to guess at answers to the question. Hopefully I do reasonably well with this, but I know that I am far from 100%. Hence, please feel free to email me with suggested topics.
My overall goal with this blog is to give you insights to help you live a better life. I try hard to not be another “me too blog” that posts what 10,000 blogs post about. For example, I would wager that at least 1,000 blogs today had a post announcing the release of Firefox 3.5 … so, I don’t see a value in me piling on with such an announcement. You’ll get the news through a dozen sources.
Okay, now let’s side that aside for a moment and talk about the value of service in general.
As I think back over my life, the people I have most admired (and do admire) had some involvement with being of service to others. In some cases, such as with priests/pastors, their entire lives were lived in the service of others. In other cases, service was a significant component, even if not the complete picture of the person.
We aren’t born with a desire to be of service. In fact, if it comes to us at all, it is sometimes in our later years. An example is my younger brother, who is the person I most admire. He retired a little more than a year ago and is now dedicating significant amounts of his time to public service. He’s always been helpful to others, but when you work 16 hours a day, there’s no time for public service.
My own desire to be of service is a fairly recent one … I sure didn’t have the desire in my 20′s or 30′s, or even 40′s.
But, one thing I am finding about service is that it adds a sense of meaning to our lives. That is not to say that you can’t have a sense of meaning if you are not of service, but being of service certainly adds to that sense.
So, I will leave you for now with these thoughts:
- Think about how I can be of more service to you in the areas of life management and learning and technology, and let me know.
- Think about whether you of being of service to the extent you can/should be, and take action as appropriate.